Building end-to-end Extension Scenarios on SAP BTP

wolfgang_scheer · ‎06-28-2021

What are end-to-end extensions?

You have an SAP backend system either on premise like SAP S/4HANA, ERP 6.0 (ECC) or a cloud-based like SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, etc., and you have a business case that requires to extend or add some functionalities to your backend system. It is possible to build extension inside of your backend system, but only by doing it on SAP BTP you get the full variety of cloud-based services and the full flexibility how to do it. This is called an end-to-end extension.

What is the motivation?

Keep the core clean – adding additional custom functionalities to your backend system makes it inflexible and hard to upgrade. Adding or extending business processes in the cloud gives you more flexibility.

Extend your user base: for B2B or B2C scenarios you like to expose backend data in a simple and secure way.

Decouple business processes from the backend system: Some business processes require additional steps and checks that could not performed in the backend system. The relevant data is temporally stored on the cloud und the backend will be updated when the process has finished.

Take the advantage of integrating cloud-based services into your scenario.

Reuse extension solutions for subsidiaries or multiple backends.

Build SaaS solutions – other organisations or customers can easily subscribe to your solution.

Improve the user experience by providing a simplified or specialised UI according to the user needs.

Establish a Launchpad for centralised application access.

Benefit from a faster lifecycle.

Optimise Performance by reducing the load on the backend and build highly agile and scalable applications.

What needs to be considered when building an Extension?

What is the best architecture for my business case?

How to build highly agile and scalable applications?

How to build multitenant applications?

How to coordinate the different lifecycles for backend and cloud-based services? How to build them independently?

How to integrate the existing customer base?

How to set up and keep a secure end-to-end environment?

How can I start?

Frankly speaking you will never find an example or tutorial that fits 100% to your business case, but to get a general understanding of building extensions on SAP BTP our team has created a couple of missions in SAP Discovery Center which describe some of the major end-to-end scenarios.

A mission consists of a sample business case, a guidance for the involved services and technologies and a reference application which shows you the core functionalities, implementation and the configuration steps. To keep the reference application up to date, it is tested regularly and will be adopted to the latest functionalities, services and SDKs.
You can use these as a template architecture to build your own extension application. And if you encounter questions or challenges during your mission you can reach out to the SAP coaches who will help you further. By the way there is no fee for using the mission content.